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It's time to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing

May 3, 2016

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By: Jacqueline (Jaci) Burns

Managing Director

Market Expertise

Content marketing. It’s one of the most over-used, misused buzzwords.

Despite the term technically being 20 years old, the Dictionary of Marketing, published by Oxford University Press, did not even reference ‘content marketing’ in its 2011 third edition (it does, thankfully, in the fourth, released this week).

No wonder there's confusion.

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action”.

The central premise of content marketing is that by giving your customers something of value – ideally, something they seek - you will receive something of value in return – ultimately, sales.

While sales is the end-goal, content marketing is the antithesis of advertising. Here, the objective is to educate and entertain, not sell. To quote James O'Brien of Contently, "Instead of being the commercial, be the show. Instead of being the banner ad, be the feature story.”

But how valuable to our target audiences is the content we're creating? It’s impossible to know because most content lacks a call to action.

And how well is the content driving profitable customer action? Few would know as few measure it.

Commonly, marketing departments measure and report on the effectiveness of campaigns. Yet, content marketing is cumulative, rendering it distinct from campaign marketing. It requires a long-term perspective, patience and continuous engagement. These conditions are ideal for business-to-business marketing which typically involves a longer sales cycle, more informed buyers, and multiple decision makers.